Good news! My dissertation has been "approved without change" by my committee at San Francisco Theological Seminary. All that's left to do is print two copies on archival paper. It feels a little unreal since the process has taken so long on the institutional end. (I first sent my complete manuscript back in late March, and they requested one revision.) But I'm grateful to see the light at the end of the tunnel so that I can begin transitioning my manuscript into a more popularized form for publication. Many thanks to everyone who has helped and encouraged me in this process. I'm set to graduate on May 2013, or maybe in February via a Trustee's meeting.

I'm grateful to my printer for printing 472 pages -- albeit with a newly installed ink cartridge -- without jamming: that is, two full copies of my dissertation. I'll mail them to San Francisco Theological Seminary in the morning. Then two anonymous, independent readers have one month to get back to me with their (hopefully-not-too-harsh) comments. For those into statistics, I'm at 58,134 words, 236 pages, 3,607 lines, 1,221 paragraphs, and 354,021.

I'm currently cleaning up the citations/bibliography. My advisor has approved the content. I need to read through one more time for typos (currently 230 pages). I hope to mail it out next week to the independent readers, who have one month to get back to me. I'm ready to be done, but I'm way ahead of the Dec 1 deadline to graduate in May 2012. Thankfully I can work on my porch; it's 63 degrees at 11:30p.m.!

Update: just finished upgrading chapter four. Next up the final chapter, #5 -- although that may take a bit more time since I've spent the least time on that chapter. But my notes are in order (I think!), so hopefully it will go quickly. Currently, I am on page 162 of 181 -- or 90% complete (because chapter 5 is shorter than the other chapters), and as before these numbers don't include the currently 36 page bibliography.

I just finished "rounding-up" chapter three from a zero draft to a first draft -- now on to chapter four, which should not take long in that it is mostly transcripts of my Communion Meditations. A first draft is a form that can finally be given to someone else to read and offer comments for improvements -- whereas a zero draft is mostly in a form only I can comprehend. So, my hope is to quickly get comments on my first draft chapters to continue on toward submitting my work to the committee.

I'm on page 137 of 191 -- or 71% through the zero-draft-to-first-draft process, not including the currently 35-page bibliography.

My first chapter is finally off to my advisor, and chapter two has now been officially upgraded from a zero draft to a first draft -- and, thus, is ready for proofreading. Tomorrow: chapter three. I wasn't kidding when i said that I had most of this material almost ready months ago. Essentially I am now on page 103 of 200 -- or 52% finished, not including the Bibliography which currently weighs in at 30 pages, double-spaced, of course.

Starting a new job and moving cross country has meant that I haven't worked on my dissertation in approximately seven months. If I had stayed at my former job, I think I would have had a good chance of getting an advisor-approved draft to the committee by the December 1 deadline of 2010. Now my goal is to carve out some time each week in order to meet the December 1, 2011 deadline. Ultimately, I have until December 1, 2013, but I would love to be finish with this project this year -- which would put me on track to graduate in May 2012. We'll see. Currently I am 40% through rounding-up a "zero draft" into a solid "first draft."

I now have a solid first draft of chapter one as well as of the preface and introduction. Currently, that means I have edited 51 of the 219 total pages (which includes the bibliography), or 23% of the total. Tomorrow: on to refining chapter two.